


Foolproof

by PinkLady80



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Birth-control Failure, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, blackout sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 10:15:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20445479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkLady80/pseuds/PinkLady80
Summary: Everything is fine until it isn’t.  His birth-control failed.





	Foolproof

**Author's Note:**

> This story contains off-page sex the POV character doesn’t remember having.

The heart wants what the heart wants and it’s not always rational or easily explained.

Mitch’s heart has two loves, hockey and Auston Matthews.

The first he has, despite his size and dynamic. The second, he never will.

Mitch remembers the moment his feelings tipped over the line. That evening on Mo’s couch, they had been between rounds of a game Mitch can’t remember now, and Auston had allowed him to get. Right. Up. Close. Auston had held very still and their noses had almost touched. In that moment of shared breath, Auston’s scent of buttery-soft leather, hot desert winds, and expensive scotch, went from familiar and dependable to harpooning him in the chest.

Time hasn’t weakened these feelings. They’re different now, more nuanced because Mitch isn’t 19. He’s learned that you can love someone and be in love with them simultaneously. Or be blindingly angry and still love them.

Every year, Mitch’s birthday wish is to still be playing hockey in May and this year the hockey gods are kind enough to grant it.

They’re kicked out two weeks later.

Normally, this is when Auston tells him to come over because he wants to cook something fancy. Somewhere his mama convinced him that cooking was a useful life skill and he likes the predictability. Auston also claims that Mitch is a great taste-tester. Mitch doesn’t have the patience for the kind of meals Auston plans but he isn’t going to turndown more time with the man he loves, so he mixes, chops, and measures according to Auston’s instructions.

This time, Mitch wakes to a text canceling because Auston’s rut started in the middle of the night. Mitch replies that he’s coming over anyway because he saw Auston yesterday and knows he doesn’t have anything to sustain him during rut, including Gatorade or granola.

Auston is still in the sweaty, sleepy phase, so he obediently drinks two bottles of Gatorade and stands in the shower while Mitch changes the sheets. If they’re this bad after 15 hours, it’s going to be a biohazard when Auston resurfaces.

He tries, and mostly fails, to keep his eyes above the waist getting Auston back in bed.

Mitch hadn’t planned on staying but he does. Auston’s never told him who he normally spends his ruts with, Mitch doesn’t want to know, and it’s lonely to cycle without a partner. If Auston’s regular person can’t be there for him, at least he won’t be alone in the condo. 

He keeps to the main level, but the saturation of scent builds through the afternoon. It makes him distracted and restless. His body feels soft and pliant, blood sparking. It’s very alien. 

The last thing he remembers before the blackout is the clock on the microwave reading 6:00.

He comes to in Auston’ bedroom, starving and aching. It’s completely trashed and reeks of sex. The sheets have been pulled from the bed; Mitch is sure the mattress is a lost cause. Auston is laying next to him, scratches criss-crossing his upper arms and chest. 

Mitch closes his eyes, trying to process. Sex happened. A lot of sex. This doesn’t mean his friendship with Auston is going to change or get weird. He won’t let it.

He’s taking stock of his body when the dark bands of skin around his wrists distract him. Are Auston’s hands big enough that he can hold both of Mitch wrists with just one? 

Wondering what else he’ll find when he looks in a mirror, Mitch shoves the disgusting bedsheets into the kitchen trash, Auston’s housekeeper shouldn’t have to deal with them, and holes up in the guest suite not used by Auston’s parents. 

His phone tells him three days have past.

His skin is painted with bruises, down the left side of his neck and across both clavicles. His hips are one big bruise.

It would be a declarative statement if they had been made with feeling and intent but they weren’t and it confuses Mitch’s wolf-brain and tears at his human heart.

A shower doesn’t dilute Auston’s scent.

Mitch discovers that Auston’s skin is going to need some disinfectant when he tiptoes back for sweats and a tee, his back is shredded.

Auston wakes as Mitch is rubbing the tacky goop into his skin. Mitch watches his face in the mirror above the dresser, is blank in the way that means Auston doesn’t plan on sharing his thoughts. Mitch doesn’t trust that face.

His scent turns heavy on the scotch as his fingers catalog the bruises on Mitch’s wrists and neck. This is the last stage of rut and Mitch gives Auston the skin-contact he still needs. His hands are warm against Mitch’s stomach and it feels unbearably intimate. 

Auston’s face shows pride through the poker-face and Mitch tells him not to get a big head; he doesn’t remember the sex, so how good could it have been?

(That’s a horrible lie. Some bonded pairs walk away with fewer reciprocal markings and the scratches on Auston’s back are something out of porn or a romantic novel. If he and Auston were together, Mitch would preen because he did that and Auston let him.)

Auston snorts, finding a clear pair of boxer-briefs and heading downstairs to thaw two hockey-player sized portions of his dad’s amazing chili.

Mitch drives Auston to the airport two days later. He doesn’t want Auston to leave but he isn’t allowed to ask for more time. Auston hugs him in the drop-off lane at Pearson, impatient vehicles moving around them. When he touches their foreheads together, Mitch goes up on this toes.

Nothing has changed. Nothing is going to change. Mitch is still in love.

The bruises fade from black, to purple, to yellow-green. The pain knowing he’ll never remember his only time with Auston doesn’t.

Summer rolls on and Mitch makes fun of Auston’s sudden aversion to spending his off-season half-naked. He can’t ask if the scratches have healed.

Everything is fine until it isn’t. His birth-control failed. That should not have happened, it has a success rate of more than 99%. His heat wasn’t due until the end of September. Now his baby is due in February.

Kyle knows about the pregnancy. He puts Mitch on LTIR. He doesn’t ask who the other father is, only that should Mitch let him know how he’s feeling and when he’s ready to tell the press about the pregnancy.

According to the current CBA, Mitch has parental leave until Baby is six months old. Zach tells him this when he visits Mitch as the Leafs NHLPA representative. As Mitch’s friend, he promises not to tell anyone.

His parents do want to know who the other father is. He doesn’t tell them. His father demands to know if Mitch is throwing his career away for some nobody. Mitch leaves. The expectation will be Auston should be responsible and ask Mitch to marry him. He won’t subject Auston to his father’s attempts to bully him into a out-dated, shot-gun wedding. 

Mitch wants to marry for love, not this.

He still hasn’t found the courage to tell Auston he’s going to be a papa. He deserves to know. Mitch is a coward but he doesn’t for fear he’ll lose Auston all together.

For years, when Auston is in the states Mitch Skypes him at 9am Scottsdale time. Auston is still not his best in the morning, and usually asleep when he calls, but Mitch loves grumpy, bed-headed Auston.

Because a person could set a clock by his morning sickness, he’s sick and dizzy from 6-noon and then sleeps for 3-4 hours, Mitch asks if he wouldn’t mind pushing their time back. Auston is surprised but acquiesces easily enough.

He looks down-right suspicious when Mitch tells him he’s taken up swimming. It’s not a lie exactly when he says it’s for his knees, Mitch would like to have functional knees when he’s 40, but his midwife said it’s low-impact and still gives him a good cardio workout.

At the end of August, Kyle sends the email informing the team that Mitch is on LTIR. Mitch puts his phone on vibrate and ignores it. Clearly MLSE employs gossipy grandmothers masquerading as hockey players because his phone buzzes all day, stopping after midnight only to start up again just as he’s headed for the bathroom for his 6am sick-up.

He falls asleep on the bathroom floor, dreaming of soft hands holding a baby swaddled in pink blankets and softer words promising him forever.

**Author's Note:**

> All mistakes are my own.


End file.
